MegèveSki

Back in Praz

We went to Praz sur Arly again today. Catherine's shins were hurting so we installed her on a nice blue run with a drag lift and a restaurant and we went off to explore a little more of the area.

This time we covered most of Praz and got all the way to the top of the Ban Rouge lift. The views from the top are quite amazing and you can see the long blue that runs along the ridge all the way back from Notre Damme de Bellecombe. Next time we're here we'll try to do the three area circuit, Praz -> Flumet -> Notre Damme de Bellecombe and back to Praz.

The picture above is the view towards Rochebrune from the top of Ban Rouge. The buildings on the far left are the Super Megeve restaurant and the top stations of the Rochebrune telepherique and the Caboche bubble. Following the curved run on the left down and along the treeline to the right puts you at the base of the run down from L'Alpette. If you look closely you can just see the Alpette chair running up the treeless ridge (the run) from left to right. The building at the top is the Alpette restaurant. Behind the Rochebrune runs you can see Mont d'Arbois in the distance with the runs down under L'Ideal chair being left and up a bit from Alpette. Behind that, far left, bits of Mont Blanc.

The reds down from Ban Rouge were good, interesting, rolly runs and there was lots of interesting off piste available. There seemed to be a lot of "gnarly young men" there with a desire to jump off rocks and cliffs. We saw one guy on the cliffs under the Tendues lift and it wasn't really that clear how he'd managed to get there or how he was going to get out again... He had a "friend" lower down the cliffs who had obviously jumped down somehow and he wasn't there when we came back so we assume he managed something daring. The picture below was taken on either La Boute or Les Rhodos red (they join up, I'm not sure if this was just after the join or before it) and shows a much more subdued bit of jumping. I tried to get a snap of the guy in mid air but only managed this take off shot and a just after he's left shot (with snow trails coming off the cliff but no sign of him as he'd dropped below the lip).

There were actually two guys jumping here; the boarder was just watching. The first jumper took off nicely but ended up stacking it on landing. Due to the shape of the slope we didn't see his stack, but the fact that his skis came up over the lip before his head gave us a bit of a clue. The second jumper, shown, landed nicely.

We had a nice, traditional, lunch at the restaurant by the Varins drag, met up with Catherine and took her up to the top to see the views and then skied back and headed home.

Snow was very good up on Ban Rouge and worn and slidey lower down. The well worn runs under the Varoche lift were pretty crap; icy and busy, more so on our last run down at the end of the day...